Trip Processing

OK, Jaleh's been gone for a couple of days now, and I haven't had time to breathe, let alone sit down and blog!

But now that things have simmered down a little, I can take the time to go through and process this trip. Mostly I took pictures of everything, so now I just have to edit them into a cohesive timeline of events.

I think I'll split it into week one and week two, at which point I can add photos to the blog and discuss what we did and where. Exciting, n'est pas? We did SOOOO much in such a short amount of time...this will be a nice chance to go back and really savour the time Jaleh and I had together here in the Holy Land.

Family visiting in the Holy Land

My sister's visiting me in Israel for two weeks!!! It's so wonderful to have her here; I can't wait to go out and show her the city sights and the Shrines and the people. There's so much to do, I hope we can get it all done in only two weeks.

Joaquin and I took the train out to the airport at 2:40 am to meet Jaleh and bring her to Haifa. We got there at 3:40, and Jaleh was already waiting outside by the visitors' area, so we hugged quickly and hauled her back down to the train terminal to catch the 3:53 train back to Haifa. I am completely surprised that we made it, but we did it! Good thing too, or else we would have had to wait around the airport for another hour for the next train...

So we made it back to Haifa at about 5:00 am, and Pat was waiting to pick us up from the station. We got the lovely scenic drive back home, viewing the Shrine of the Bab from Ben Gurion Ave., before we made it home to sleep. We then slept until about 2:00 pm.

After we woke up, I was able to bring Jaleh down to register at the Reception Centre. Then we made our visit to the Shrine of the Bab, which was wonderful; so restful and relaxing. I have visited the Shrine many times since I've been serving here, but there's something different about being able to share it with a visitor, especially someone as close to me as my sister. It was really special.

We were both a little too tired to go to the pilgrim talk that night, but we did make our way over to 2nd November for some food and a movie with the boys, Jayce and John Michael. Always a barrel of laughs with those two. :)

Now we are preparing to go to work - I've gotten permission for Jaleh to volunteer with me in my office while she's here, so that will be a lot of fun! She can see what my day-to-day job REALLY is like. It's going to be great. And we have a small get-together planned for Wednesday, a sort of meet-and-mingle, so that should be nice.

Medical Expenses

I had quite a terrible scare the other day.

I've been waiting for the invoice from my surgery to come in so that I could pay it. However, when I got the bill from Health Services, the amount was almost 10x what I had been told it would cost. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the bill, and I was rather afraid that Dad might have a conniption when he found out what had happened.

I sent a timid email to Dad and then called him, hoping that he was in a good mood. He was pleased to hear from me, although not exactly pleased about the circumstances surrounding my call. We came to the conclusion that whatever the price was, we would pay it, but it was extremely important for me to try and contact the hospital to see if I could arrange for some sort of discount.

Coming from Canada, I'm not really used to haggling with health care providers over price, but this was a special situation and I was rather desperate for any sort of monetary relief. I called the billing section of the hospital and was able to talk to a very nice woman who suggested I contact the BWC Health Services in order for them to grease some wheels with the administration section. So that is exactly what I did; I explained that I don't have insurance coverage for these types of operations, I had been told a different price, I don't have money, etc.

They were really great about the whole thing - between myriad emails and phone calls and meetings, they were able to get the price changed back to close to the original quote. Turns out there had been a lot of miscommunication that had happened prior to the surgery, and then the invoice had had the wrong code for the billing situation.

So, at the end of the day, I don't have to pay much more than I originally thought, and my parents don't have to declare bankruptcy to help me out financially. Excellent; all those prayers at the Shrines really paid off...

Happiness

I sometimes feel that my life has no relevant meaning or purpose, that my existence is predicated on the sole fact that my parents whimsically decided to procreate and my immortal soul happened to be floating around in the ether when it occured.

However...

Some days it only takes a smile to know that I've touched a life that will be irrevocably changed because of my presence. And knowing that takes the sting out of some of the meaninglessness.

I'm not trying to be vain or proud of what I do. What I do is simply try to touch someone's heart and make their day a little bit brighter. If I can do that, I've accomplished my unspoken, heartfelt task for the day.

And when that happens, I feel a small sense of purpose, a small sense that this is part of what I am here for, what I am here to accomplish in this fleeting material existence. I like to make people happy - and that makes me happy.

Pilgrims in a Holy Land...

My friends, the Cyr family, recently came on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is one of those experiences that stays with you for a lifetime, so I'm really glad that I got to share some of those same moments with them.

It was really wonderful to see Genevieve as well, because I hadn't seen her since March when I came to serve here in Israel, and she has since then gotten married. :) Yay! I'm sad I missed the wedding, but there are so many more experiences to be had...

I spent a lovely afternoon with the Cyrs in Akka, the prison city on the other edge of the bay opposite Haifa. I am loathe to admit that this was my first excursion into the Old City since I have been here, but in all honesty I've been so busy working and serving and trying to get enough sleep that I hadn't really given myself the opportunity before now to go and explore the Old City portion of Akka with some friends.

It was a whole lot of fun; we all met up in a sherut down to Akka, with our good friend Abboud driving. He is a well known fixture amongst the Baha'is that serve here. On the sherut also was an old friend of my parents, Patsy Irving, which was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. We took the sherut all the way to the Land Gate, at which point we got out and decided to do a little walking/shopping through the bazaar areas nearby. Well, we happened upon a music store, and that was it. The Cyrs are a very musically inclined family, so many minutes later we emerged many shekels lighter than when we had stepped in. I even got myself a little ceramic drum to practice on. (Mom would be so proud!)

After the bazaar experience we were able to go into the Al-Jezeer mosque located nearby. For a couple of shekels we went inside the compound to see one of the oldest and most beautiful mosques in the city. This mosque was present during the time of Baha'u'llah, so it was quite easy to picture many of the early believers crowded around outside to see if He was going to visit and talk to the multitude of worshippers.

We didn't have much more time to stay in the Old City (we are asked to be out of that area of town around 4:00 pm or so, mostly for our own safety because it gets pretty rowdy after dark), so Patsy, Marie-Jo and I wandered around a while longer looking for the famous Templar Tunnels before we realised we were hopelessly lost and headed towards the sea port not the tunnels. So we quickly made our way back through the maze of narrow streets and overshadowing buildings to the Land Gate to meet our sherut again to get out to Bahji and the Shrine of Baha'u'llah.

What a glorious feeling, to be able to visit the prison city area where Baha'u'llah was imprisoned for so much of His life, and then be permitted to go and visit the holiest spot on Earth, His holy resting place in Bahji. The juxtaposition of the two is a humbling and reverential experience.

Mom's poetry

Mom sent me this poem she wrote about me, the one I blogged about earlier when I claimed that we are psychic. Here's what Mom has to say about me:


Seven Hours Different
By Karen Sasani
November 22, 2007

We used to snuggle in her small room
In bed before 8
Read together
like we couldn’t get enough to drink
Both dressed in plaid and blue jeans
without knowing what the other
had on that day

Now she’s seven hours different
and half a world away

Watching her sister nurse
she wanted to taste it too
She stirred the dough
while I lined the cookie tin
I got out the paints
While she filled the water glass

Now she’s seven hours different
and half a world away

I put on nail polish for a wedding
And she said I had cherries on my nails
She splashed her sister in the bubble pool
While I snapped their pictures
We saved our crusts for the birds
and walked to Girl Guides together
and were so sure that everything
would always be this nice

Now she’s seven hours different
and half a world away

Musings

Sometimes I wonder how much of our lives can be measured by the steps we take to ensure our posterity.

It seems a shame that so many of us are judged early on in our lives solely by arbitrary labels and ideas.

I think about what it means to be trying to get by in a world that looks at abstracts like success and freedom with an alarmingly black-or-white mentality - there don't seem to be any tangible grey areas.

the numbers flow

incessantly, unswervingly

making sense fall to the wayside

emotion and intellect

failing to interconnect

living on the point

of a double-edged sword

seems ludicrous

sanity fleeting, ungraspable

the numbers flow

and the numbness sets in

Baha'i Celebrity Alert!

I met a really cool guy last night, you might have heard of him - Rainn Wilson. He is most well known for his work on the television show The Office, as the character Dwight, but he's also been in numerous other t.v. shows and movies, i.e. Six Feet Under, Entourage, Sahara, C.S.I., etc. Neat! It's really fun to meet Baha'i celebrities, because there aren't very many of them.

He and his wife Holiday are on a three day visit to the Holy Land, and I bumped into them at the pilgrim talk. Very nice, very down-to-earth guy, especially for someone who has to work in Hollywood. Rainn and my friend MJ hit it off well because she's a singer/songwriter, so they had alot to talk about his most recent film, The Rocker. Apparently it was filmed in Toronto, so it's disappointing we didn't know about it sooner because she totally could have been an extra! :)

Anyway, like I said, it was very cool to meet a Baha'i celebrity who hadn't let fame and money get in the way of faith. Spirituality and material success don't have to be mutually exclusive; it's simply a matter of figuring out which one is the priority in your life.